Carla Cook: Just a Swingin' and a Groovin'

On the question of categories, Carla Cook will say this much: "I'm definitely a jazz singer in that I like to improvise and I like to swing." Beyond that, the subject doesn't interest her. "I don't spend a lot of time haggling with the word "jazz,?" she explains. "I let the "Jazz Police" handle that. I do music."

Carla Cook has been doing music and doing it spectacularly well for a number of years. However, it was with the release of her acclaimed, Grammy-nominated debut CD, It's All About Love in 1999 that Cook separated herself from the ever-growing pack of young female jazz vocalists. In fact, with her remarkable voice, finely honed musicianship and boundless repertoire, Carla Cook has the potential to be the most important jazz singer of her generation.

Just don't tell her that. "I got into this because I wanted to make music that I loved," says Cook. "Whatever God has for me that's the thing I want to get. I listen to my intuition and if it feels good and it feels right and it feels progressive, then that's what I'm going to do."

On the evidence of her just-released sophomore CD, Dem Bones, Carla Cook has every reason to trust her intuition. Dem Bones is a wonderfully inventive and superbly executed jazz record with references to funk, Brazilian and inspirational music. "It is a tribute to the trombones that I've worked with," Cook explains. "When I moved to New York, about 10 years ago, I worked with a band whose leader was a trombonist. Sometimes I would sing with lyrics, but other times I would simply harmonize trombone lines with him. Five years later I met yet another trombonist, and the same sort of thing happened." Her work with Lionel Hampton

's Make Believe Ballroom Orchestra only furthered Cook's affinity for the bone section.

The trombonists and other instrumentalists on Dem Bones were not chosen at random. "It is important to me that I know the chemistry is going to work when I select musicians." Cook assembled a trombone section composed of players that she had worked with before. Fred Wesley

As good as the musicians are, it is Cook's own remarkable gifts that hold the listener's attention on Dem Bones. She has a ravishing voice: burnished and soulful with a perfectly clear tone. Her range extends from a second soprano down to a second alto. "I am a B-flat kind of a woman," laughs Cook. Her intonation and articulation are marvels of precision and her trumpet-like scat choruses are exceptionally well constructed. According to Cook, good pipes alone don't cut it. "When I'm teaching voice, I'm also teaching how to be a band leader. It's not enough to know how to sing a song. You need to learn how to count it off. You better know the key. When [the musicians] know that you know what you are talking about, that's when you earn their respect."

, Carole King, and Marvin Gaye as examples, Cook observes, 'they crafted lyrics, they didn't just write them." However, don't expect her to join the chorus of voices attacking the Great American Songbook as obsolete. "I happen to love standards," she replies. Cook believes that timelessness is the one quality shared by all great music. "In 50 years, we"ll still be listening to Marvin Gaye and we"ll still be listening to Rodgers & Hammerstein." Of course, if you are going to sing a classic, "you have to have something else to say with it or have a different twist on it."